Dylan actually wrote this song about the fear of war (the "rain" of bullets and bombs) and nuclear holocaust, during the 1962 Cuban Missle Crisis. He said he wrote it fast, in absolute terror. But the song works for any global crisis, as we surely are in right now, where global "leaders" callously continue to ignore catastrophe.
The photographs are often powerful, sometimes disturbing, often beautiful. My only quibble here is that he tends to take the lyrics too literally; for example, if the line is about a boy next to a dead pony, that's the picture. The essays are powerful, a scream to pay attention and act. About ANYTHING: School murders, poisoning the waters, and so on.
this book was given to me out of the blue by jackson's uncle paul, because of our shared "environmental enthusiasms" (he is currently working to determine scotlands CO2 budget). while the premise of the book is somewhat contrived, a "photo essay" with photographs accompanying the lyrice to bob dylan's "a hard rain's a-gonna fall"... the result is a compilation of some very moving pictures. since i had jackson, any depiction of children suffering makes me really sad, and those are the images i've continued to think about. worth a look.